You got that stereotype. Everything thinks, when you tell them, “I’m studying art”, that you’re absolutely wasting your time. They get this idea that you’re sitting there, you know, in this big, expensive place called a college or a university, sucking up your parents money as you trudge along through these classes teaching you the “high knowledge” of all art-ly things so that you emerge with this beautiful degree, signed and framed, to sit back in your parents home knowing only how to paint well. You can sure dip that brush in that wonderful little blotch of color and strike it upon that canvas with ease and skill, and maybe you can freelance and earn some of that sought after green but….nothing that will give you sturdy business. Almost like you’re swinging through the days on a hope and a prayer. Traditional art is beautiful and sometimes it can be sold at an amazingly high price (especially after you’ve died….but that doesn’t necessarily help now, does it?) but can be sketchy, walking on unstable ground.

I plan to run with my career in a way where society is headed—in a way that can reach the every day individual. Something that I can display through means virtually accessible by everyone in a way that displayed beauty and and deep construction that is not too “high” or complicated, beyond what the populus can find engaging. That’s it, I tend to help make art engaging. Not just pieces we can observe still on a gallery wall. The digital world is an incredible thing, and with almost every aspect of our daily lives being invested in this virtual media, I know it is the wise path to choose and, very fortunately, something i am incredibly interested in. I think traditional artwork skills can merge beautifully when done through digital media, and through time and practice it can be achieved.

My strong and direct plan, as of now, is what I have been setting out to do, why I chose SMU. To entire the MIT program that they have at SMU in Plano—Guildhall. My goal is to graduate with a B.F.A. degree in studio art, and hopefully maybe a minor or two if I can squeeze them in, and be accepted into the M.I.T. program so I can be merged int it early at the end of my senor year, cutting out the amount of time I have to spend time (and therefore, money) I have to spend getting my masters in what I aim for. Classes and so forth are very important factors and which is something I know I cannot ignore, but mainly, my concern is the finances f college and SMU in general—the classes I choose each semester may not particularly matter in the end when my family cannot not afford to keep sending me to the place where I hope to gain the pat toward my dream as a conceptual artist for video games.

I have visited Guildhall already and done an orientation/meeting day there where they explained their program and the different pathways you could go about it, and how one might want to delve into the world of video games. One of the most striking thing to me is the statistics they showed over the average salaries each type of career job made and how many of their graduates were accepted into the gaming community and got into the industry making games almost immediately. It was startling. An artist, with the skills that they teach there and so forth, makes, an average, roughly around $70,000. A number such as that is certainly not bad, as I would do what I adore for much less, most likely. Their acceptance of graduates immediately into the industry, too, was absolutely amazing. Guildhall explained how they helped prompt the student into selling themselves and organizing their portfolio so that it could be sent out to companies who make games and so forth. So in this case, creating my own business is something I am not considering very heavily at all….though being a part of a creation in an indie studio game company could definitely be a possibility in the future.

Bringing breathtaking and interactive artwork is a key point for me, and video games, which have always been a massive influence in my life, have been a medium through which I’d like to express myself and influence others for quite some time. If I can help construct a new game that is both stylistically attractive and engaging in a story perspective, it will fulfill in more ways than excessive money ever could.

To get to where I am now, accepted into a rather prestigious University, their art school, and with a scholarship in both fields (academic and art), I know that somewhere along the line I must have shown that I have skill in certain areas. Specifically, I must have shown that I possess, in some shape or form, some ability in the arts that is “greater” than the average majority of the population. While I do not fully deny that I may possess something that others do not, my main issue is realizing the extent of my talents and skills and practice on them to my full extent. While planning on majoring in Studio Art with a B.F.A., my main goal while here at SMU is to be accepted into Guildhall and pursue a career as a conceptual artist in video games. I believe that is where my talents lie—conceptualizing. I am constantly, and quite fervidly recognizing my desire to create designs in that aspect, and so I write and conceptualize very often. However, my concepts, especially character concepts, are related to humans, and though I have a strong desire to illustrate all of my imaginings, I do not feel than I an adequately do so do to my lack of ability to freehand human anatomy properly. This often discourages me and frustrates me beyond the point where I not even settle for attempting, and instead do not draw anything at all. I do recognize, however, that that is a very detrimental mindset and process to have for myself,—the constant lack of confidence in my abilities, so I simply submit to nothingness. I am creating a vicious cycle for myself—I am not impressed with my own skill, so I do not practice, and because I continue to not practice, I continue to look upon my artwork with distaste. I recognize I need to immerse myself into the practice of humanity anatomy head first, and i certainly hope that, combined with my own free practice, that my art classes here give me the opportunity to do human anatomical studies from life, especially with nude models. Also, beyond the fact of humans, regular practicing in areas such as how lighting work as composed to colors, and so forth is needed. Though I may not look very highly upon what I possess, I have noted that others certainly do, which gives me the idea that I am successful in what I have done and what I plane to do. Most importantly, I need to develop a more positive mindset by own work, and see that each failure, perhaps, in my artwork attempts is another step forward into what will hone my skills into a level I can more readily appreciate.

Training Pokemon on my Game Boy when I was thirteen didn’t really seem like such a significant hobby in comparison to my future. I found myself, however, at a Pokemon convention, my Pokemon I had diligently trained up on a large screen where I defeated my opponent and won the competition. Video games have always been significant in my life, but it wasn’t until I was older that I realized I could use my passion for artwork to personally create what inspired so many people like myself. I’m an avid writer creator, and artist, and in my work I want to show society that video games are more than just guns and bullets being played by teenage kids. They are beautiful pieces of work created through an eloquent merging of computer mathematics and artistic design, and I move to prove that. Through artwork, I focus on creating engaging, believable characters that people can connect to and story lines that people are able to immerse themselves in. I’d love to be able to keep in contact with you, if you have a card with you, I’d be glad to keep you updated with what I am working on.

I’ve always had this passion to create a being, or character that not only feels like a breathing creature, but that people can connect to. Most importantly, however, my drive is to be able to freely and deeply express myself and convey my emotions through these characters. In a sense, that sounds selfish, but I cannot have one without the other. If I create a character that people love and enjoy, but that I personally do not feel that I can invest interest and natural emotions is, then I don’t feel any need or obligation to let my creation thrive publicly. Though I am much more content to let my creation thrive privately, whether through interaction with personal friends or merely in my own mind, there ceases to be much purpose to my creations other than self enjoyment. I want to inspire others, for them to be affect influenced, changed, so that they too can express themselves in the way that I so dearly wish to do. Though artwork and design, I move to show the world beauty through surrealism, pattern, and organic creation, products of the mind that could, through enough visualization and desire, be projected as a nearly existing product. I want my work to motivate people to create their own work, flourish in their own world and creativity, I want my work to drive people to look at me and yearn to collaborate, to gather a source of connection and friendship. I want to know I have affected people some way, and I want it to affect them personally. To me, a personal connection is much more important than a worldly, vast one. To know that I have stirred the inner spirit of a few people out in the depths of the world is enough for me. To create worlds and people that I love is enough for my selfishness. To create those worlds and characters to touch the other is all I want for the whole of me. I do hope that others, too, look for and see the passion within my works.

I don’t believe that many people consider me a reserved person. However, interestingly enough, I consider myself reserved, at least to a certain extent. I am open and honest with my opinions when the situation is set up so that they are proper to state them, but otherwise I keep them tucked in the corners of unspoken things. I really don’t have a large drive to interact with most people socially—I am incredibly selective when it comes to people who I most enjoy being with. Because I am selective, and therefore do not find people with whom I often connect with, I am often lonely. Because I enjoy being alone does not mean that I enjoy being lonely. There is a concrete difference between the two. I value being alone and private, but I also value people. Because I value people, I often try to discover the one that I connect to most. That is where I invest all my time and energy. It is perhaps destructive (as I have witnessed before,) as all of my sources and lovea nd attention are put towards them. (Which is not to say I act coldly towards other acquaintances now that I have that person. In a personal sense, I can feel myself investing so much more in a single person who I adore, instead of many people who I just like.) I have this tendency, also, to wish, or so desire, that they invest all of their interests back into me, which is very unfair of me, which is why I do not allow myself to confront them when I get upset. So, in that sense, I also value adoration.

Privacy, intricacy, adoration, beauty, and cognition. I love privacy because I love thoughts. Being a cognitive person is of high importance to me, not because I want to appear intelligent, or that I am always in thought, but because I always am and I sincerely enjoy it. I like being inside my mind. But I know that being inside one’s mind for too long is both dangerous and unhealthy, so I’ll cautiously invite others inside. At least to a part of me. But I am cautious about letting people know the truth of how I feel about things that are so close to me. I often feel I am too strange—once I voice my inner feelings, people will often look at me in a confused, strange manner. They will often say nothing much afterword.

I write quite frequently, and in my writing I develop characters, and spend a majority of those thoughts developing them, analyzing them, inventing situations for them. Though it may seem pathetic, it’s the only place I feel the most comfortable, next to talking to my Savior Jesus. It’s the only place where I feel completely complacent, pleased, and understood, in a sense. Though I understand that my characters I develop for writing on online sites and for myself are not real or breathing individuals, I feel attached to them more than most people I know in my real, waking life. I don’t understand this. I value my personal creations, my characters, so highly, but often more than real people, who I also value. It saddens me, really. Perhaps I just don’t feel that I can properly connect with the world.

When working, I have this sense of needing to be among other sorts of stimulation, which is quite interesting, as it’s recommended that multi-tasking is not the most beneficial way to create a good study environment. Whilst doing something such as doing mathematical problems for homework or reading some text given by a professor, I always have myself doing something else. Generally, I am on the computer, and while on I keep my instant messaging programs up and running and allow for some of my closest online friends to message me while i am doing my work. It seems rather counter-productive, and perhaps it may be, especially at times, but from my point of view it tends to help my productivity (at least in a certain sense). The boredom of studying tends to get to me faster than others it seems, and because of this I often need little breaks or intervals of periods where I just have a moment of discussing something with someone else. If I don’t have that, I tend to get more distracted than is beneficial to me—as in, I go for such an amount of time just studying, uninterrupted, that my mind tends to wander and I find that I have been doing something other than my work for over an hour. I have yet to really find a more efficient and thorough way of completing my work. At times, surely, my method probably detracts me from my assignment more than it should, but I suppose it’s almost like the less of two evils. I would rather afford to sometimes become a bit distracted and offtrack then become too bored and frustrated to efficiently work at something after some time.

Exercise is something that I desire strongly to do but never seem to find the time or means to do it. It’s definitely a vicious cycle of sorts. I know that regular exercise is prone to giving one more energy, to become physically and mentally more active, but I can never seem to pull the right amount of juices out of me to start the process of a regular work out schedule because I tend to get so drained. But ’tis life, ’tis life. I don’t believe that my habits have heard me, at least detrimentally, thus far. But I am hoping to looking at new forms of study to a certain points. Long periods of silence make me restless, for example, which I believe is another factor of my need for other stimulation. I do, however, get easily stressed over the amount of work I have, and tend to mentally destruct myself and batter myself down. I am definitely working on stopping such hurtful habits.

I am currently, however, still working on adjusting to the college life, and so far I seem to have underestimated the amount of time the work given has been taking. Slowly, I am trying to relieve myself of the stressers, catch up and do things beforehand. I believe everything, in time, will be ground into a good foundation

There has always been this sense (or viewpoint more of) in the world that video games are pointless, inane things that are disgusting time suckers. When the word video game arises, parents develop images of kids in their earlier teens staring with zombied eyes into a screen, running around shooting people or blasting creatures into mounds of gore. The activity is pictured as mindless, and as such those who play them are pictured as mindless as well, as the only thing they manage to achieve in a day’s time is unlocking the AK-47 and achieving the Combat Efficiency ribbon. There are no doubt those who fit the stereotype of those who waste their precious hours away trying to make it to that next level. Wasteful people should not be the icon for games. They should also not be the icon for all gamers. Admitting to being a proud female gamer myself, my childhood was frequented by the company of games. without them, I’d be a completely different person, and may not be pursuing the career which I so passionately pursue now.

My parents, even before I was born, were both involved in the technological side of business, despite computers still being rather clunky at the time. My mother even worked in retail selling computers and games to be played on them. My father was on the more technical side of things, in the development and coding process. They both, also, played video games in their spare time, and as a very young child I had the experience of watching them play the original Super Mario Brothers on the Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Nintendo. I watched in fascination, and they introduced me to the concept, allowing me to fiddle with the pixelized characters on screen, however awkwardly. It may have that my subconscious took a liking to the thing before my find could full grasp the subject. That, and the regular stimulation of both my mother and father playing games on the old systems as I grew. Soon our family invested into newer systems as they came out, the PlayStation and later on, the PlayStation 2. The PlayStation 2 is where I truly began to engage in the whole gaming “world”, investing more times into games in general, becoming my favorite past time. As for artwork, it had always been a hobby of mine, and something I recognized I had a talent in, especially with encouragement from others around me. I had sketched fan artwork of Pokemon (another big influence on my childhood) and other game characters, but the direct connection of making some of the two most important aspects of my life did not connect until later on in my life. Most of, if not all of my few friends, gamed in one way or another, and I often have a difficult time engaging with those who don’t play game or appreciate them in some manner. During my years of high school I finally connected the two ideas, especially after becoming even more thoroughly engaged with gaming, after acquiring a PS3 and looking deeper into how games were made, the conceptual artwork behind the creatures and environments. The work behind these creations fascinated me, and it wasn’t long before I strongly desired to do the same work that conceptual artists for games were presenting in their art books. I wanted to present to the world what I could conceptualize, what what bloom form my mind. And that’s what I plan on doing.